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Background

The security and economy of the European Union as well as the well-being of its citizens depends on certain infrastructure and the services they provide. The destruction or disruption of infrastructure providing key services could entail the loss of lives, the loss of property, a collapse of public confidence and moral in the EU.

In order to counteract these potential vulnerabilities the European Council requested in 2004 the development of a European Programme for Critical Infrastructure Protection.

Since then, a comprehensive preparatory work was undertaken, which included the organisation of relevant seminars, the publication of a Green Paper, discussions with both public and private stakeholders and the financing of a pilot project.

Council Directive 2008/114/EC of 8 December 2008 on the identification and designation of European critical infrastructures and the assessment of the need to improve their protection set up a procedure for identifying and designating European critical infrastructures (ECIs).

At the same time, it provides a common approach for assessing these infrastructures, with a view to improving them to better protect the needs of citizens.

Motivation

As stated in EPCIP, stakeholders must share information on Critical Infraestructure Protection (CIP), particularly on measures concerning the security of critical infrastructure and protected systems, interdependency studies and CIP related vulnerability, threat and risk assessments. At the same time, there must be assurance that shared information of a proprietary, sensitive or personal nature is not publicly disclosed and that any personnel handling classified information will have an appropriate level of security vetting by their Member State.

To solve this real need, CloudCERT project aims at providing this secure information sharing testbed framework in order to exercise unified coordination using same communication protocol standards for improving visibility of common threat awareness, vulnerabilities, advisories and alerts specific to CIP.

In order to achieve this goal, an important work must be carried out based conceptual CSIRT communication modelling and architecture; definition of secure information sharing; information standards and protocol definition; design of the testbed platform and implementation; and finally pilot reality check based on user cases.

Aims

The main objectives are:

To supply a testbed framework approach to integrate mechanisms for coordinating partnerships and stakeholder efforts to effectively exchange information related to CIP and their security aspects.

To secure EU infrastructure improving understanding of the relationships among its elements and the link between risk management and infrastructure protection.

To provide the capability needed to eliminate potential vulnerabilities in the critical infrastructure by sharing vulnerability information.

To manage security as a whole using an unified process of information exchange to determine the risk and decide upon and implementing actions to reduce risk to a defined and acceptable level, at an acceptable cost.

To obtain value derived from its information exchange by exercise implementation, measured in the effectiveness of preventing, deterring, and responding to cyber attacks on control systems within critical infrastructure.

A common reporting and information exchanging on the six phases of the CIP life cycle in order to create a comprehensive solution.

Benefits

The short term impact has been to provide CIP bodies with a testbed platform designed to support the Member States' CIP information exchange, coordination and supervision.

In the midterm Cloud-CERT will enhance the cooperation through the platform implementation in a real production environment and it will contribute to the minimization of cooperation obstacles for CIP operators and protection authorities in different countries in Europe.

In the long term, it is expected to contribute to the establishment of an European Homeland Security environment for the protection of European CIs.

Target groups

The main target groups and beneficiaries of this project are:

Member States through the authorities of Critical Infrastructure Protection.

CERTs or CSIRTS competent in CIP.

Operators or Owners of the Critical Infraestructure (CI).

Duration

The Project started off at the beginning of 2012 with an estimated duration of 2 years, and has ended on December 31, 2013.

Significance and Innovation

CloudCERT project has a remarked innovative nature. The technological solution developed make use of the more advanced techniques and tools in the following fields:

Information sharing: CloudCERT testbed ensure easy, simple information sharing for cooperation joint exercises, as well as a rapid and risk-free implementation in a real operational and collaborative environment.

HOME/2010/CIPS/AG/20. With the financial support of the Prevention, Preparedness and Consequence Management of Terrorism and other Security-related Risks Programme. European Commission - Directorate-General Justice, Freedom and Security